How to delete to trash via terminal (with mv command)? [duplicate]

Question

I would like to know how can I delete a file and/or move it to trash with mv command?

I know where the trash located is, then I tried with this commands to move it to trash:

mv somefile /home/username/.local/share/Trash

this command work fine, but when I open trash in launcher it's still show empty. I can undo this deleted file in original location with:

mv /home/username/.local/share/Trash/somefile ~/

but if this location /home/username/.local/share/Trash isn't for Trash then where is moved my file?

I know rm will permanently delete file and not send it to a trash folder and there is no flag in man rm to delete file to trash.

Answer 1

You can use gvfs-trash instead of mv

gvfs-trash somefile

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The reason you were unable to see your file after moving it to ~/.local/share/Trash is that there is an additional directory structure below that i.e.

• ~/.local/share/Trash/files to contain the actual trashed file; and
• ~/.local/share/Trash/info containing metadata such as the original location

Although you could have used

mv somefile ~/.local/share/Trash/files

in which case somefile would be visible in the trash can, it would not be possible to use the nautilus/gvfs Restore function to undelete the file, due to the lack of info metadata - you would need to know and manually mv the file to its original location. In that sense, only gvfs-trash is the exact command-line equivalent to trashing a file via nautilus.

Answer 2

Information about Trash directory:

~/.local/share/Trash contains two directories named info and files.

• ~/.local/share/Trash/files contains original files.
• ~/.local/share/Trash/info contains files (extension : .trashinfo)which have information about path and deletion date of files.

Therefore, if you want to use mv command then follow command:

mv somefile ~/.local/share/Trash/files

But it is not recommended to use above method to move files to trash.(as commented here)

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You can install trash command line i.e. trash-cli by following command:

sudo apt-get install trash-cli

And here are available commands for trash:

$ apropos trash
gvfs-trash (1)       - Move files or directories to the trash
restore-trash (1)    - Restore for Command line trash utility.
trash (1)            - Command line trash utility.
trash-empty (1)      - Empty for Command line trash utility.
trash-list (1)       - List trashed files.
trash-put (1)        - Command line trash utility.

You can move/put files to trash by following command:

1. trash-put somefiles
2. or gvfs-trash somefiles

List trash by command: trash-list
Restore files by command: restore-trash
Empty trash by command: trash-empty

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